Month: December 2015

Every year at the winter solstice, the rising sun illuminates the interior of Newgrange, the prehistoric monument in County Meath on the northeast coast of Ireland. I can just about hear the sighs of relief of those who gathered on this windy, cold hill nearly 5,000 years ago as they saw the sign that longer, lighter days were returning. So great is the human need to know, to be certain, that prehistoric people in the … Read more…

Last Wednesday in “Dealing with Difference” I describe “bonding social capital” and “bridging social capital.” I enumerate the serious consequences of too much of the former and make a case for more of the latter. Bridging social capital means developing social networks, norms of reciprocity, mutual assistance, and trustworthiness with people who differ from us. Bridging social capital is harder to build than bonding social capital because this tends to evolve naturally among people with common … Read more…

Our survival in the past depended on being part of a family or tribe. Now it depends on relating effectively with those we perceive as being outside our tribe or group. To solve the complex issues we face at work and in our communities, we need to work with people with different backgrounds, experience, areas of expertise, and points of views. In other words we need to build social capital—social networks, norms of reciprocity, mutual … Read more…

When we get stuck in “solution wars” in meetings, unbeknownst to us, we are often arguing about our beliefs or mental models about the world. Mental models, according to Peter Senge define “deeply engrained assumptions, generalizations, or even pictures or images that influence how we understand the world and how we take action.” These mental models are double-edged swords. On the one hand they provide a framework that helps us order and interpret the world; … Read more…